Conference: Languaging Crises Conference (LanCris).
Location and dates: University of Helsinki, Finland. 4–5 March 2026.
Deadline for proposal submission: 31 October 2025.
Event presentation
The Languaging Crises conference focuses on the ways in which language is used and abused in crisis situations or the ways in which various crises are dealt with in different texts. In particular, more research is needed on how the language used during small- and large-scale crises is targeted at, and received by, different demographic subsets within heterogeneous societies, and whether effective communication requires a messaging strategy that takes those subsets into account in different ways.
The presentation proposals can approach communication and language use during crises from various perspectives, ranging from linguistics and language studies to discourse analysis, communication and social studies. They can also deal with both diachronic and synchronic communication about global and local crises and examine texts by public figures, the media, organisations or individuals. The crises investigated may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- health crises, accidents and traumas
- wars, conflicts and violence
- natural disasters and environmental crises
- economic/financial/political crises
- organisational crises and reputation crises
- inter/personal crises and life changes
- hateful and impolite situations
The confirmed keynote speakers are
- Tony McEnery (Lancaster University),
- Merja Koskela (University of Vaasa),
- Dario Del Fante (University of Ferrara),
- Heini Hakosalo (University of Oulu).
Contact details: lancris@helsinki.fi
Website and CFP
For further details, please check the event website and original call inserted below.
Web https://blogs.helsinki.fi/languaging-crises/lancris-conference/ 
Call for Papers-lancris(Posted 8 September 2026)
Conference: Shakespeare in a Polarized World.
Location and dates: WBO, Université Libre de Bruxelles. Brussels. 6 – 9 March 2026.
Deadline for proposal submission: 31 August 2025.
Organisers:
- Waseda University (Tokyo),
- University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute (Stratford-upon-Avon),
- Université Libre de Bruxelles.
The conference’s aim is to explore the raison d’être of literature and the arts in a world of increasing political and cultural divisions.
The focus of the conference will be on how Shakespeare and the study of Shakespeare might contribute to mitigating the present political and social divisions that threaten to undermine the basic principles of a democratic society: divisions that range from cancel culture and TERF activism, the vilification of immigrants and climate change denial, to geopolitical struggles around the world. It takes as its starting point Richard Rorty’s argument that literary texts are “narratives which connect the present with the past, on the one hand, and with utopian futures, on the other,” promoting human solidarity. The aim of the conference is to identify shared views and values within the palimpsestic nature of the works, the widely-varied discussions and interpretations they have invited, and the complex views that unfold in the works themselves, as points of solidarity and keys to overcoming the polarization in the world today.
Possible topics of discussion could include:
- Engagement with contentious aspects of the text through digital and other forms of media
- Theater practices that encourage the audience to engage with the text and one another
- The work of editors in dealing with politically contentious aspects of a text
- Surveys of Shakespeare criticism that identify common threads of ideas in antithetical discussions
- Politically or culturally divisive issues added to the works through translation
- Adaptations of the works that address the issue of polarization
Prospective keynote speakers include:
- Professor Nataliya Torkut (National University, Zaporizhzhia; Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre) and
- Professor Michael Dobson (Shakespeare Institute, the University of Birmingham).
Registration and proposals
Please register here. You will then receive a message with an email address to which proposals should be sent by noon (JST) on 31 August 2025. You will be notified of results of the selection by 30 September 2025.
Proposals should include 1) the name of the author, with affiliation, and email address, 2) a 100-word biographical note 3) the title of the proposed paper, and 4) a 300-word abstract. Selected papers will be organized into panels of three 20-minute papers each with a 30-minute Q&A at the end of each panel.
Inquiries
Please send inquiries here or at jean-louis.moortgat@ulb.be
Conference websites
- For more information, please visit: SHAKESPEARE IN A POLARIZED WORLD – WBO, Université Libre de Bruxelles 6 – 9 March 2026.
- For details and the latest updates on the conference: Waseda University Brussels Office.
(Posted 2 July 2025)
International Conference: Authors as Characters in Fiction, Film and Graphic Narratives.
Location and dates: Université de Lorraine, Nancy (France). 12-13 March 2026.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 1 September 2025.
Venue details: 91 Avenue de la Libération, Université de Lorraine, Nancy (France).
Event description
The aim of this international and interdisciplinary conference is to understand the fetishisation of English-speaking canonical authors (such as William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath, Mary Shelley, D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway), the ‘versioning’ (Silver xvi) of their texts and images, the fabrication of myths which are ‘endlessly repeated and woven into culture’ (Miller xiii), the relationship between auctoriality and celebrity, and artistic and historiographic representations.
It will include three main generic perspectives: biofiction, biopics, graphic biofiction (see CFP).
Keynote Speakers:
- Stephanie Barron (author)
- Lucia Boldrini (Goldsmiths, University of London)
- Belén Vidal (King’s College London)
- Xavier Giudicelli (Université Paris Nanterre)
Submission guidelines: We invite proposals for individual papers or panels. Please submit paper proposals (which should include the title of the paper, author(s), a 250-300-word abstract, institutional affiliation, contact information and a short bio-bibliography) before 1st September 2025, to the following address: idea-authors-as-characters-contact@univ-lorraine.fr.
A selection of articles will be published in 2027.
Website address
All information about the conference and the conference website will be posted at the IDEA website address.
Contact details
idea-authors-as-characters-contact@univ-lorraine.fr
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 10 March 2025)
Irish Exceptionalism – annual SOFEIR (French Society of Irish Studies) conference.
Location and dates: University of Strasbourg, 26-27 March 2026.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 15 December 2025.
Venue details
The conference will be held on the Esplanade campus of the University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France.
Event presentation
Ireland has often been held to be somehow exceptional, an island on the edge of Europe whose historical, social and cultural trajectories have at times led it to diverge in surprising ways from both its nearest neighbour, Great Britain, and the wider world. This perception of Irish exceptionalism has long played a role in how the island has been understood both within and beyond its borders.
From its early vernacular and Latin literary contributions some of the most significant in medieval Europe despite its liminal position at the edge of the known world to its influence on modernist literature and theatre, from the cultural nationalism of the Gaelic Revival to the twenty-first century success of Irish playwrights or writers such as Martin McDonagh and Sally Rooney, from the 1990s and 2000s global fascination to “Celtic” popular music and culture (Sinéad O’Connor, Enya, The Corrs, Riverdance) and the more recent “green wave” of films, television series and popular music, Ireland has frequently been framed as occupying an exceptional space in the world of art and culture or at least as having provided a literary, artistic, cultural and linguistic contribution out of proportion to its size.
Ireland’s unique position as Western Europe’s only postcolonial nation has also fostered a sense of national and cultural uniqueness, which throughout the 20th century was reflected in persistent economic underdevelopment, the highest emigration rates within the European Economic Community, the strong influence of the Catholic Church over public morality, education, and health in the Republic and a long and protracted history of intractable ethno-nationalist conflict in the north of the island.
However, developments since the late twentieth century have challenged claims of Irish uniqueness and exceptionalism. The short-lived Celtic Tiger economic boom contradicted the narrative of Ireland’s economic underdevelopment, indicating Ireland’s alignment with global neoliberal market economics. Revelations of clerical abuse scandals diminished the standing and authority of the Catholic Church and contributed to the liberalisation of private morality as reflected in legislative changes permitting divorce, same-sex marriage, and abortion, which brought Ireland in line with European liberal democracies. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 ended armed conflict the north and established a power-sharing government between nationalists and unionists. Recently, both Northern Ireland and the Republic have experienced rising anti-immigration sentiment and protests, mirroring the emergence of radical populist movements across Europe. Ultimately, is Ireland merely as exceptional as anywhere else?
The 2026 SOFEIR conference aims to convene researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to examine, reassess and challenge discourses of Irish exceptionalism. Participants are encouraged to identify and classify these discourses, uncover overlooked or forgotten narratives, and investigate their origins, contexts, and the cultural forces, institutions, and individuals that shaped them. The conference seeks not only to challenge or deconstruct these discourses in light of historiographical changes and cultural shifts, but also to highlight and account for the specific characteristics that contribute to the perception of Ireland and Irishness as exceptional.
We particularly welcome interdisciplinary and comparative contributions that engage with the notion of continuity, liminality, and Ireland’s place between periphery and centre. Is Ireland as exceptional as anywhere else, or does its history, culture, and politics demand a more sustained claim to singularity? We invite contributions that examine the ways in which discourses of difference have been constructed, sustained, and challenged, as well as those that reassess Ireland’s place in wider contexts.
Possible areas for exploration include, but are not limited to:
- The short story – a prototypically Irish genre?
- Stylistic and linguistic characteristics of Irish literature
- Irish literary figureheads: exceptions or representative of a wider anglophone literature
- Place and Irish literature and art: karst, bogs, and lochs
- The persistence of Ireland’s oral tradition in written literature or in contemporary oral forms
- Irish theatre
- Irish popular culture (music, films, TV series, Internet culture…)
- The Irish language
- Ireland’s status as a colonial or postcolonial nation in the West
- The exceptional nature of the conflict in and around Northern Ireland
- Exceptional solidarities (e.g. Irish nominal or actual support of Palestine)
- From the Celtic tiger to the Paper Tiger: Ireland and neoliberalism
- Early Medieval Ireland: a land of saints and scholars?
- From monocultural Ireland to post-Celtic Tiger, post-GFA multiculturalism
- The emergence of an Irish populist right
- Religion and belief systems in Ireland
- Irish landscapes, ecologies and environmentalism
- Comparative approaches: Ireland and other “exceptionalist” nations (e.g. the U.S.)
- Queer, feminist, and critical race approaches to Irish identity and normativity
Please email a 250-word abstract and 50-word bio to Tim Heron (sofeir2026@gmail.com) for consideration no later than 15 December 2025.
Website address
Contact details
Tim Heron: t.heron@unistra.fr
(Posted 6 October 2025)